While the latest Beige Book released earlier today carried the usual boring mix of self-serving observations by Fed officials ("slight to moderate" growth in a quarter in which the Atlanta Fed sees GDP plunging to 0.5%) and a handful of enlightening anecdotes, all of which confirmed that the US economy was rapidly slowing as expected with the word "strong" appearing 37 times, compared to 58x in the January and 83x in October while the word "weak-" rose to 34x, up from 13x seven weeks ago and 19x in October, there was one stunner contained in today's release which may spell serious pain for stocks.

But first we bring your attention to chip and semiconductor bellwether Micron which tumbled as much as 6.2%, its biggest decline in a month, as Wall Street grows increasingly bearish on memory-chip pricing. According to analysis by DRAMeXchange, PC DRAM contract prices will be down a whopping 30% in the first quarter, and since inventory levels are still high, there is little hope of a reversal anytime soon. The Q1 price drop would be the worst since 2011, while a shortage of low-end CPUs is exacerbating the problem, eliminating an avenue for demand growth. "The overall market has thus entered freefall, meaning that large reductions in prices aren't going to be effective in driving sales," according to DRAMeXchange.

As a result, Cleveland Research cut its 2019 revenue estimate to $24 billion from $25.5 billion, citing those same DRAM price headwinds.